Mori

The game takes place in a randomly-generated forest, complete with trees, flowers, mushrooms, and NPCs. You can cut down trees to get acorns and sticks. You can plant acorns in grass to watch them grow into new trees. You can talk to NPCs to learn their names, what items they want, read some poetry, and see some foreign text. If you give an NPC what they want, they will craft a snowball for you. Place enough snowballs on the ground and you will win the game.

Screenshots

Talking to NPC:
{"name":"Mori_No_Junk.png","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/8\/f\/8f44c9312c0e40d28f13f98368765dcd.png","w":768,"h":448,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/8\/f\/8f44c9312c0e40d28f13f98368765dcd"}

Placing snowballs on the ground:
{"name":"Mori_Screenshot.png","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/6\/c\/6c194630322554a8e280bcc8fc7995f2.png","w":768,"h":448,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/6\/c\/6c194630322554a8e280bcc8fc7995f2"}

Planting acorns:
{"name":"Mori_Planting_Acorns.png","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/e\/3\/e312997323a0785d785b3ad755f86041.png","w":768,"h":448,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/e\/3\/e312997323a0785d785b3ad755f86041"}

Download

Source
I'm on Linux, so there is no Windows binary available at this time. There's a crummy Makefile that should work for Linux users. Check README.txt either way.

Progress Log

Me: http://tins.amarillion.org/2016/log/4099/
Everyone: http://tins.amarillion.org/2016/log/

Got it working on Mac - only change was to the makefile (attached)
Not played it much yet but looks really polished!

Thanks for the kind comments, Peter! This has been my first time participating in a game competition, and I'm quite pleased with the results. Let me know if you find any bugs.

I was curious about this game from the start, you updated your log frequently and you got some cool graphics up early on. So I played it last night. It compiled neatly on my linux box with the provided makefile.

For a first speedhack entry you should definitely be proud. It's a complete game with a clear goal, plays smoothly, implements all rules, no annoying bugs. Graphics are nice and colourful, the choice for low resolution is good because it allows you to rapidly get something that looks nice. It's simple though, I can think of a lot of things that you could do with this to add more depth and replay value - enemies, variation in the quests, more different objects that interact in different ways with the world.

I have to ask, when you meet an NPC speaking Japanese, what does he say?

As for the controls, I think I would have preferred a separate key for actions, rather than having to put the cursor on the exclamation mark.

Compiled just fine on my Debian.

I played with it until the end, after what I could effectively pour snow on the map ^^

Took me 1405 seconds !

I have the same remark as amarillion regarding the controls. That aside, nice entry !

I'm glad the Makefile worked.

Originally I wanted to add a building aspect to the game, where you could craft sticks into wooden blocks to build a home, or something to that degree. I also wanted a day/night cycle and some enemies to kill. I ultimately spent more time than desired working on the trading system to implement the other ideas though.

I wasn't sure what I wanted them to say, so I had them say this: 「昨日、わたしのくるまがジャイアントなねこにたべられた！けっきょく、いのちはもくてきといみがない・・・きみは日本語をよめるか？」, which means "Yesterday, my car was eaten by a giant cat! In the end, life has neither meaning nor purpose... Can you read Japanese?" The NPCs essentially die when you trade with them, thus the "life has no meaning" part.

Now you've spoiled it for everyone else! I threw that in last-minute, because I felt the game needed at least some reward. I thought it would feel "cheap", but I'm glad that doesn't seem to be the case.

Would using the number keys be a good alternative? 1-9 to correspond to the items/tools/controls on the HUD?

Wow! That's about 23 minutes! Good job sticking it through 'til the end!

Thanks for the comments, everyone. Once reviews are all said and done, I might go back and rework this entry into something a bit more. The code is a total mess though (I ended up cramming A LOT into src/player.cpp).

Oops. Added a spoiler tag

Indeed, that's the kind of thing I meant. Maybe also introduce some farming aspects?

I meant a key, e.g. "s" for talking, cutting, taking, while you'd still use z-x-c for selecting and using items. But then you could also introduce 1-9 as alternative shortcuts for the items.

It took me 930 seconds.

Wait.. why is the compile time so huge? Did he implement a ray casting engine using templates?

I was @ work ;-)

Edit: because your system is messy ? stop your backgrounding pron torrents ;-p

Took me less than a blink of an eye to compile here.

Yeah, that too. I got started on that in the beginning of the competition with being able to plant acorns. What kind of things would be good to farm? Wheat? Melons? Berries?

Oh, I see what you mean. That's doable. For the competition, I just kept it simple with the single action.

It's about 4 seconds to compile on my machine. What's it like on your end?

Ah, excuses excuses.

Edit
What are your thoughts on the graphics? I'm not an artist by any means, so I try to keep "art" within 8x8 tiles. Would an improved game do well with these graphics?

Like I said, the graphics are nice, simple but effective. The low resolution has a certain charm. The blue guy with the eyepatch is also very distinctive - how did you come up with that idea?

I think there is a lot more to gain in the game play department, by improving quests, object mechanics etc, than you could gain by improving the graphics.

Compare for example Alex 4, a game that was created specifically to show that you could make a fun game even with low resolution graphics.

I designed the character sometime back in 2013 shortly after I learned about Allegro. I was eager to make a game with a friend, so when asked what kind of game to make, I jokingly said, "A 2D top-down 3D platformer starring a blue blob with an eyepatch whose end-goal is to eat a legendary cheesecake," or something to that degree. Although that was just a joke, I ended up rolling with the blue blob with an eyepatch idea. Due to the limitations of 8x8 graphics, having two "normal" eyes on the character looked really weird, so the eyepatch was a nice way to avoid weird eyes. That's why, if you notice, the NPCs' eyes are narrower than the player's, to avoid them looking "bunched" together.

Wow, that's a fun little game! The graphics are limited, but fit just nicely.

I think I'll move forward with developing the game into something a little bit bigger and with more polish. The game is pretty "open ended" right now, what with the randomly generated terrain. I think I'll design some of the terrain by hand, and then let the game generate the rest itself (like have a fixed village somewhere, but let the game spawn trees and whatnot wherever else it wants).

I really like the graphics. I could see it being on a retro/new gameboy.